An executive summary is a document that provides a brief overview of a business plan or proposal. It is typically one to two pages long and should include the most important information about your business. Creating an executive summary can be tricky — you need to find a way to distill all of the important information into a concise document. In this blog post, we discuss how to create an executive summary that will impress potential investors.
What Belongs in an Executive Summary
At a minimum, your executive summary should cover what your business does, the problem it solves, who it serves, how it makes money, and what you're asking for — whether that's funding, a partnership, or simply someone's attention. Each of these should be a sentence or two, not a paragraph.
Why Most Executive Summaries Fall Flat
The most common problem isn't bad writing — it's a lack of clarity about the business itself. If you're not sure how all the pieces of your business connect, that uncertainty shows up on the page as vagueness or overly long explanations that try to cover every angle at once.
Start With the Map, Then Write the Summary
This is where mind mapping helps before you ever open a document. When your business has already been organized visually — offer, audience, revenue model, operations, and next steps all laid out — writing the executive summary becomes a matter of summarizing what you already see clearly, rather than trying to think it through for the first time on the page.
Need Help Getting Clarity First?
If you're staring at a blank page trying to write your executive summary, the real issue might be that the plan behind it isn't clear yet. A mind mapping session can fix that first.
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